with the most satisfaction when they do not
offend my nose. Behold, therefore, that dish
in yonder oven; it contains the rotting
stomach of a glutton. Take it out and smell
to it."

"Excuse me, no! But are you really baking
it for your own— "

"Disciple of the adepts," said Artephius, "I
am not baking it. In this oven of mine the fire
is set not under the meat, but up the chimney.
Look up into that chimney and tell me what
you see?"

"I see, O master, a lambent flame more
brilliant than seven times seven Will-o'-the-
Wisps."

"And what do you feel as you look up?"

"I feel as it were a great wind rushing, and
whither the fire points the wind rushes. Yet
the day is still and calm."

"Even so," said Artephius, "I make the
wind my servant, and he blows over those
entrails, carrying up their humidity and their foul
odours into the outer air. When the vapour of
it is all gone, yonder glutton's stomach will
remain, with all its contained secrets, dry in my
hand; a little crystal will contain it, and I may
know whether he died of food or poison when I
will. But if I had asked the fire to help the
wind, fire would have been too masterful, and
from before his raging many secrets would have
fled."

"And in this dry cake of a man's liver there
was a great secret found?"

"There was found," said Artephius, "the
secret that lived with a murderer, ate of his
bread, drank of his cup, curled itself at its heart
within his bed by night, rode unseen on his neck
by day, weighing his head to the earth, choking
him, furrowing his face with the marks of its
thin cruel fingers. I powdered as much of this
corpse-cake as a dainty man might take of snuff
within his fingers, and the little pinch of mortal
dust spoke, being questioned; the secret also
stood ghastly and large before me, to denounce
its keeper. The pinch of dust sufficed to hang
a murderer."

"But how," I asked, "can the dust speak?"

"Stand by," said Artephius, "while I question
it, and let your eyes attend, for the
questioner of nature admits answers only by a way
of speech more vivid than that by the ear;
speech must be to the eye only, and will here
use words that remain with ever-present testimony
bearing witness to all people and all
times. We trust not passing sounds, gone
when they are uttered, present only to those
who were present and attentive at the instant
of utterance, and dependent for their
preservation upon memory that may fail of its trust.
The language in which Nature speaks to those
who question her is vividly distinct, and yields
commonly together with the word its living
record."

Artephius having thus spoken, the profound
Alipili placed in a crystal tube a little of the
powder of the corpse-cake, and having mingled
it, for confusion, with the complex distillation
of burnt malt, called by the vulgar, porter, gave
it to the hand of Artephius.

"Call this," said the philosopher, "if you
will, the complex fluid from the stomach of one
who is thought to have drunk death in some
unknown form of Medea's broth. Now see, I let
it rest. Does it contain heavy matters that will
settle to the bottom? If so, among these will
be undissolved parts of a heavy poison, if any be
here, or of the food in which that poison was
given.  Something falls. I pour off the upper
liquid into its own glass, to be hereafter
questioned, if I wish to question it. I pour water
upon this settlement to wash it clean, and pour
that water off. I throw nothing away. A
second time I wash it, and pour off the water.
Upon this absorbent paper that will suck its
moisture in, I place that settlement, lumpy and
white, you see. Bibalous paper over it as well
as under it——"

But here I interrupted him, and said: "I see,
Artephius, that the sage Alipili now warms a
shining knife, and the knife is pointless, and it
will not cut. Explain to me that enigma, before
you proceed."

"I proceed to it," said the philosopher. "I
take that warmed knife which the adepts call a
spatula, and press it upon the thick blotting-
paper, under which lies that white settlement.
If it be earth, it dries. If it be fat, it melts,
and makes a stain upon the paper. That hot
knife over the suet told me once how a
child had been slain cruelly and traitorously
with poison mixed into its Christmas pudding.
There is no stain here. The paper dries.
Now, therefore, I prepare for this suspected
bit of grittiness, pursuant to the decree of
nature, whose laws are my laws, the ordeal by
fire."

A little crystal tube, too small to contain one
sigh of an infant's breath, and at the bottom of
the tube that dry morsel of settlement, together
with a little soda flux to aid the melting.
Up leaps a tongue of fire. "First I
discharge humidity out of the crystal." With
the tongue of fire the whole length of the tube
is licked. "And now," said Artephius, "for
the ordeal."

The bottom of the tube glows into red heat,
and, behold, there rise two nooses or rings, one
that mounts highest is brown, the other has a
steel-grey lustre.

"That is the glitter of the metal arsenic,"
said the adept. "But I have here
cunningly devised a magic eye that is a servant
of the cave. Make it your servant, O my
friend."

I used, therefore, the magic eye, and by its help
saw every eight-sided crystal that made up the
noose of arsenic that had risen in answer to the
questioning of fire, and had denounced the
murder done.

"But if the fire deceive?" I asked.

"They who sit in the light of nature
questioning what is in man, have many servants, and
are taught by many voices. One witness may
suffice, yet we depend not upon one alone. I